Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Forgot how day 2 after renewed exercise is worse than day 1. Walking is a struggle. Yes, we know that stretching and all that stuff should be done properly but it doesn't seem to have worked. No amount of Himalayan Pink Salt, green tea, ayurvedic donkey dung or whatever else is today's fashionable gym-hippy food can cure a good old fashioned case of over doing it.

Markets, well really not much to say. Core view persists, market is still fighting any up move and yesterdays EFSF 2+ trillion Grauniad story appeared to come as an excuse after a days up grind rather than a cause. So today's "it doesn't exist" should matter as little. TMM are beginning to wonder if the market fascination with how the motor of the new EU vehicle works is getting a little over obsessive. When we buy a car, we rarely measure the diameter of the injector jets, check the burn dynamics in the combustion chamber or query the back pressure of the exhaust system. We just want to know it will work and get is from A to B. If we did want such details we would rather trust the manufacturer rather than a journo's views. So TMM having previously laid out what they think "should" happen, are stepping back from the Guessfest of what will happen and think they will wait for the "something"... or not.

The sharp turnaround in mood yesterday and a continuation of the selective comment bias is still to the bad news side which suits us fine having reloaded at our favourite time of the day (don't ask, we won't tell). We know we are taking a bit of a risk being long into resistance and against some pretty interesting soothsayer signals... But hell, so what?

With little else to debate TMM have been perusing the papers for lighter topics. One thing we noticed was that Stone Roses are reforming. TMM have noticed over the past couple of years a massive revival of rock tours by some old classic names. Now we know that royalty income has been hit by everything online but we are wondering if the return of past greats (and Duran Duran) to touring is now more due to their investment portfolios returning no income and hence forcing them back onto the road. Poor old UB40 appear to be too late, having just declared bankruptcy, leaving them filling in UB40s for real. Perhaps they could relaunch as P45?

Nice to see the UK and Singapore property markets are about to get a fillip. "Horst Reichenbach, who heads the EU task-force on Greece, told the Financial Times Deutschland that Athens is pursuing an agreement with Switzerland that would significantly increase Greece's ability to pursue tax evaders who have deposited money in Swiss bank accounts. Greek citizens have deposited an estimated €200 billion in Swiss accounts". Which is nice! However magnanimous we believe the average Greek citizen to be, we can't see all that money returning directly home.

Oh what's this...? "Android releases Ice Cream Sandwich". Has a robot been holding a frozen food based snack prisoner? Is it going to exchange it for 1000 cream puffs? Oh no... it's just the most stupid name for a new phone operating system. TMM remember in the 90s when traditionally named companies (usually in insurance or accounting) changed their names to some global-nonsense word. But this trend for food based tech is getting silly.

Oh look more on food: Dale Farm. Now what is that Northern Irish dairy up to now? They in a hostile takeover bid? Ah yes... but by Basildon council. That's odd. Ahhhhh... Not THAT Dale Farm. This one is a sanctuary for people who don't have to follow the same laws as everyone else based on a tradition that they haven't followed the same laws as everyone for hundreds of years. Oh dear.

Next page. Greece is on strike. Wow at this rate there is a good chance that Greece could end up like Naples. Have to say that European sympathy is not that forthcoming whilst those average wages and pension comparison tables are doing the rounds. As far as markets go though, Greece really has been written off. It's already crashed and its just a matter of how it is hosed off the European pavement and how you support its dependents.

What's this? Bears on the rampage? We know... that's why we are long. Oh hang-on, Lions and Wolves too? Reading this story is like reading a potential Movie Script. But which one would you make it into? Night at the Museum? A Disney cum Toy Story animal escape escapism special? A mammalian Jurassic Park? A Jungle story? Or go all introspective and do "The Deer Hunter". Or just blast it up with a Chevy Chase/Steve Martin roadtrip meets the wild comedy? But after reading "In the summer of 2010, an animal caretaker was killed by a bear at a property in Cleveland. The caretaker had opened the bear's cage at exotic-animal keeper Sam Mazzola's property for a routine feeding. Though animal-welfare activists had wanted Mazzola charged with reckless homicide, the caretaker's death was ruled a workplace accident. The bear was later destroyed. This summer, Mazzola was found dead on a water bed, wearing a mask and with his arms and legs restrained, at his home in Columbia Township, about 15 miles southwest of Cleveland" we think we'll go for Pulp Fiction .

Oh hang on something's going bleep... Back to work. Aussie Dollar crosses. Some interesting soothsayer turn signals have been pointed out to us on many of them. Worth a punt? Lets look. OK, yes let's buy some GBP/AUD to keep us amused...

Wait until day 3, me old china.... as age advances the inflammation not only begins more slowly but persists longer. Stretching routines, before and after, and best of all, ice down any joint that has a history of swelling and redness. But watch out for Shrinkage.

Traders must be desperate if they are getting their econ news from the Grauniad. Only LB's brother reads that one these days.

Ntwsc..Yes , we did see that and even listened to Wolfson on the Radio this morning being interviewed about it. Struck me as a very sound man. Don't know why we forgot to mention it. Really interesting idea. Not so much, his correct observation that having a plan (in case of emergency smash glass) is essential even if it's never needed, but that you could really start to upset people by launching prizes to investigate something contentious. Hmmm. Perhaps Brussels to retaliate with a 1 mill euro prize for a solution to "shutting up a "told you so" Britain"..

There were loads of things that we should have mentioned actually ..most important probably is that they may have found a viable vaccination against malaria.

LB, Thanks doc, someone mentioned magnesium sprays. Will rubbing a metal pencil sharpener on the ache do instead? Remember finding out with glee they were made of magnesium and setting them alight as a kid.

Krugman does Cain. An analysis of the doomed 999 Plan, which has the advantage of being simple enough to get J Sixpack to understand it and vote for it while being rapacious enough to steal from J6P to enrich the Koch brothers:

9.55 or 10.05 EDT can be a pretty good time to do the opposite of whatever Johnny Tosspot has been doing since the open. Especially when equities are out of step with FX risk proxies like EURJPY.... imvho

Indeed LB, that's why I was suspicious of the SnP's melt up and repeated stall since the end of August, this time ostensibly on the back of the Groaniad, with no meat on the eur/jpy bones.I really only trade FX with the occasional venture into commods, but seeing as the day job's recently been even more testing than usual, jobbing eur/gbp is a happy medium until the next gear is double declutched.

You know, if this investment banking/hedge fund lark doesn't pan out, you guys could easily do this writing stuff for money. You'd only have to take a, oh, (licks finger and points towards airconditioning duct) 90% haircut on your current incomes.

"It is crucial to the health of the world economy that we find ways of allowing competitiveness to adjust so that trade imbalances, and hence the present scale of indebtedness, can be reduced. Neither liquidity nor austerity are answers to the question of how to restore a loss of competitiveness."....

"Asset purchases work by increasing the amount of money in the economy. When the Bank buys assets, the people who sell the assets to us receive money which can then be used to buy other assets. In turn, the sellers become buyers of other assets, and so on indefinitely as the money is transferred from one account to another. The prices of assets that investors choose to buy go up, raising wealth and pushing down on yields. Those yields are the opposite side of the coin to the borrowing costs of companies. In these ways,the Bank's purchases of assets increase demand in the economy."